735 Stop Overthinking and Start Doing with Gunnar Lovelace

DON'T LET PERFECT BE THE ENEMY OF GOOD. We can talk ourselves out of almost anything. “I’m not good enough.” “I’m not ready.” “I don’t have all the skills.” But what if you just took the plunge? What if you risked things not being “perfect” and put yourself out there? You might fail, but you’ll learn a lot more than if you had never shown your project to the world. It’s like I always say- the biggest risk takers are the most interesting. For this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with the entrepreneur Gunnar Lovelace who is passionate about telling people that it’s ok to make mistakes. Growing up poor with a single mom left Gunnar with a burning desire to create wealth to do good. As a result, he is a five-time serial entrepreneur focused on social impact at scale (people, planet + profit). Gunnar is the founder and CSO of Thrive Market, which offers organic groceries online at wholesale prices nationally. It has raised $200 million and grown to seven million users and 700 employees in three years. Gunnar shares that part of the reason he is so successful is that he didn’t know everything when he started. He says that you need to get in the driver’s seat instead of overthinking. Learn how to battle your perfectionism and dive into your dreams in Episode 735. In This Episode You Will Learn: What Gunnar tells his entrepreneurial friends (1:30) Why it’s important to make mistakes (2:00) How to use fear as a teacher (3:00) Why you need real market feedback (4:00) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:10Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to this episode, a very special one because we have a special human being on. A dear friend of mine that I've connected with recently, who is up to a big game in life and is looking to transform the world and the health that we experience in the world. His name is Gunnar Lovelace and he is a serial entrepreneur in nonprofits, technology, fashion and real estate. But most recently, he is the founder and co-CEO of Thrive Market, which is the largest e-commerce company in LA and is revolutionizing the health food industry.

• 0:50Lewis Howes?

  Now it seems like it'd be a lot to learn how to create this like animation cartoon company at 21 essentially and teach and then understand how to teach education at the same time. Did you have a lot of people working with you? How big was the company?

• 1:03Speaker 01

  It was about 20 of us. So it wasn't a big company.

• 1:06Lewis Howes?

  You started it yourself as a founder?

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Yes, started it and then we ended up selling the company about a year into the, into the project. Which was great. I mean, it wasn't, wasn't a huge hit, but it was a great, you know, it's like 21 and I had a nice, nice win. And yeah, I mean, for me personally, I think one of the things that has always been my orientation to life is just like learn as ferociously as possible. And it's one of the things that I tell a lot of my other entrepreneurial friends, particularly women that I think are actually more qualified than men often, but think that they need to know more and prepare more. And I, I think that we often overthink what we need to do next. And instead, the most valuable thing that we can do is just put ourself into the situation, get into the driver's seat,

• 1:54Speaker 01

  make the mistakes and see how, see the real world dynamic instead of try to overthink it. And that to me personally has been such a powerful learning lesson over and over and over again, like. Like, I've never built a company like Thrive Market before. You know, we're 400 employees. I've never operated with 400 employees before. But you know, you just have to like, you lean into it and you're honest with yourself and honest with your leadership team and and make a lot of mistakes and make sure that there's a culture that it's okay to make mistakes while still being very oriented towards excellence and performance. And just be willing to learn. And I think that's such, and I know you share that. I mean, that's what your work's all about.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's interesting you say that because a lot of entrepreneurs that reach out or email me, and I'm sure you get the same thing. They're always asking a lot of questions. They have fears, they have doubts, concerns about putting themselves out there, creating a product or a company. And they always ask, how did you do it? And I'm always like, to be honest, I was just so ignorant about how to do it that I didn't have the fear of looking bad or looking silly. I was willing to put myself out there and try.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  And take a lot of action over and over and make mistakes.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  And a lot of people just aren't willing to make those mistakes. They don't want to look bad in their family or friends. It sounds like that's what you did. You were just willing to put yourself out there and, and learn as you've.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like learning opportunities. It is a mistake, but it's also compost for what's going to come next. It's like a fertile terrain for which the next seed will come.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  And, and you know, it's that, it's that willingness to just fall down over and over again and pick yourself back up. And there's going to be things that really work well. And all it takes is a few things to work well.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  That's it. You don't have to be perfect at everything.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  That's right. And you look at most people that have been really successful in their lives. They've all had similar experiences, you know, and I think, I think, you know, you sound like you had inherent confidence. I did not. I was really insecure and I've always used fear as like a teacher for me. So like wherever I was afraid of something, I would be like, okay, I'm really terrified of this, so I'm actually going to go try to do it because I'm really scared of this and I can tell, like, that just became an early teacher for me. And I, I think, is you know, to, to the point of the conversation, I think it's such a powerful thing just to be willing to take the plunge, get into it. Uh, and, and you know, I love the, the mantra, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  We are always overtraining. We're always overthinking it. We're always trying to make it perfect. You know, get out there as quickly as possible. Friends of mine that are starting businesses or thinking about ideas, like, is this, is this right? Is it good enough? And, you know, I, I need another six months to like, make this perfect. And I'm just like, stop it. Just stop it. Like, get out there. There's nothing better than having real market feedback, real people touching it, real people giving you inner feedback about what they think about it. And, and that's actually the fastest way to iterate on it.